choices

My Numbers Are Running Short

/ lovizmytrio / 3 Comments

Words are first on my list for things I needed to learn upon arriving in Spain. Yes, needing to know the words for everything I need to say, but more importantly, all the information I need to hear. This is what I thought I’d be learning in Spain, and I have. Who knew how big a role numbers would play?

Let me begin with a small criticism of my back-asswards (as Bruce would say) country, who still believes the imperial system for numbering everything is the way to go. What are you thinking, America? You should just spend the one billion dollars or whatever it is you think it will cost, repaint the signs, republish the textbooks, and convert! Can we please begin to admit that the metric system is superior, that Centigrade makes more sense than Fahrenheit, and that a 24-hour clock is actually a much more logical way to arrange meeting times?

So I haven’t only had to learn that calamares muy fresco, when spoken proudly by a waitress as their premiere menu item, actually means squid with the head still on and the ink sac still intact, so when you cut into it everything is coated in black goo that adds to the slimy appeal (this isn’t my beautifully ringed calamari!), I’ve had to learn that 1.6 kilometers equals a mile, that one kilogram is equivalent to two pounds, that 14,000 feet (when trying to explain Colorado’s famous Fourteeners) equals 4267 meters, that 16:30 is 4:30 p.m., that 1.50€ for a liter of gas is equivalent 6€ for a gallon, that every time I spend 1€ it’s like spending $1.30, and that 38 degrees is TOO DAMN HOT.

Oh, and the buildings? The ones I put into my maps program which was working perfectly on Google Maps Application on my iPhone and now works like shit since I stupidly upgraded to iOS version FUCK OFF, I’M NOT IN ALICANTE? Their numbers are mysteriously etched in glass above doorways along streets whose names I have mostly memorized, because without my amazing Google Maps (how I miss you!), I would never know the names of the streets–there are random signs posted on buildings of proud owners who once spent the money, buildings not updated for years to the extent that I have had three, yes three, hometown Spaniards step out of cars or ask as they’re walking, “Can you tell me which street this is?” (I would like to add that the Spanish vocabulary for this question is well within my realm, and thanks to an accurate map program and a somewhat photographic memory, I have been able to respond appropriately all three times).

Now that I know how to navigate the complex systems of communication that exists between continents, I think, perhaps, it is time for me to learn what Spanish TV is all about… but wait… it’s 22:43, and the kilometers between here and where I need to be are heavier than a kilo of plums, the only fruit whose 0.99€/kilo price will fit into our limited basket of needs. My numbers, like my words, are running short.

Costs

/ lovizmytrio / 5 Comments

“Why must you work every night?” Mythili asks, her ever-proper English bleeding through, even in Spain. “So we have money to buy food and go to fun places on the weekends,” I reply as quickly and brightly as I can manage, wondering the same thing, her words tugging my heart in every direction. “Oh yes, because we wasted 55€ on gas that one weekend?”

Yes, Mythili, my maker of details, my memorizer of moments filled with groaning parents and frantic disappointment, where a simple trip to the beach cost more than I earn in a day (gas, tolls, parking, ice cream… we didn’t even buy real food!).

I am making this work, is what I want to say. I have to work every night because I am determined to make this work. I want to see this country, I want you to experience it, and we cannot stay if I don’t work, we cannot take a weekend in Barcelona, drive to Portugal at Christmas, or go to the Spanish circus if I don’t work.

Instead I gather her up in my arms and hold back the tears that have been absent for weeks (a miracle! After months of ever-present pain and ever-ready tears, it’s been weeks since I have felt them on my cheeks). One day you will understand, I almost say, but I know she won’t. She will be like me, thinking back on my childhood, wishing I had more time with my always-working parents. And she’ll remember these long evenings without her mother and wonder why I brought us here.

Just like me, cycling across town, entering one Spanish home after another where children scream at me, where people cancel on me whenever they see fit, cutting my paycheck for the week but leaving me with random gaps of time that I can’t quite fill, I will look back, I just might look back, and wonder why I brought us here.

But she can’t hear these doubts that sit like acrid lemon juice on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I breathe in the smell of her hair, whisper, “I love you,” and ask her to make an amazing plan for our weekend, no matter what it might cost. After all, it has already cost us enough.

My Paper Highway

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

This is not a paper trail. This is a paper mountain, a paper highway. A dragon, perhaps? (Or would its fiery breath burn everything to useless cinders)? From gathering paperwork for five beginning in May (remember this one? One of Five) and ending on one last string of hope with printed boarding passes, I have thought many times, the paper trail ends today. It ends with the visa in the mail. No, with the printouts of hotel and car rental reservations. Oh wait! The bank account setup, phone contract, and lease agreement. But… you mean, I need a foreigners’ social security number? And my husband too? AND my three girls (EVERYTHING x5)?

I even put a Facebook post, a month ago: DONE with Spanish paperwork! So proud! Until… the light bill. The employment paperwork, more trips to the bank, the ayuntamiento, more forms to print, make copies of, mail (it got to the point, with the shitty Spanish hours of 9-2 for everything, that we gave up and bought our own fucking printer).

Bruce said to me today, “No more paperwork for years!” I almost laughed in his face. “Are you forgetting that in eight months I have to renew my teaching license, get a new job, find an apartment, sign up for a new cell phone plan…” the list goes on.

This is the year of my yellow-brick-road of paperwork, the sheets the bricks leading me to the compilation of my dreams, the carpe diem of my life… My paper highway, like a long tail trailing behind me, is all a matter of moments traded for filling out forms to sunning on the Mediterranean, to seeing Picasso’s art in person, to visiting Roman ruins.

I think I’m done, I’m really done! (Oh wait… I have to vote? To print, complete, scan, email…?)

After a Year in Spain…

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

My teeth will be coffee stained. There is no remorse for this, no trip to the dentist, one of the few medical services wholly uncovered, whose riches I see once a week in the mid-city mansion where I tutor three students and transverse to the third story of their home.

I’ll be fluent. Mostly anyway, enough to pick up on street conversations, meal requests, payment inquiries, everything related to school. Everything that I will need to know.

I will wake up each day and be ever so grateful for the socialistic society that provides us with a computer, texts, projectors, document cameras, copies, and everything else we could possibly need to function as educators.

I will only be me, the person you know so well, just slightly different. I might confuse this store for the microcosm of Spanish society, or forget that everything’s open relentlessly, or remember that I can hop in a car and drive across the country on a whim and a prayer.

Yes, a whim and a prayer… the same two words that carried my family 5000 miles, penniless and filled with hope, to become the people we would be after a year in Spain.

Home

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

It’s been six weeks. They’ve had some bitter arguments, teary-eyed, face-slapping, pinching arguments. They’ve fought over toys, bread, milk. They’ve had fleeting comments about one place, friend, family member, or taste that they miss from back home.

But they have not once said, “I wish we didn’t come.”

Instead they have filled their time with: week one–decorating their rooms with paper torn from one of the notebooks we brought, colored pencils from Wal-mart, drawing pictures of flowers, pretty little girls, rainbows, and taping them up all over the white walls. Week two–preparing for school and getting their feet ready to walk miles in a day, gushing about the beauty of the harbor, trying out different kinds of foods, commenting on all the similarities and differences between this country and theirs. Week three–adjusting to school, crying a bit, laughing a bit, bragging over short hours, casual clothes, a variety of subjects that they’ve never experienced before. Week four–perfecting their hideouts in the park, being chased after by boys and girls, loving the festival’s parade, carnival, and ginormous cotton candies. Week five–wanting only uniforms to conform, they asked for nothing else, not more money, a desire to own a car, be free, to speak better Spanish. Week six–curling in their rooms with books in the iPad, playing games with Zoobles and the cars they spent six euros on today, blowing bubbles and living in a world that is completely different from home, a world in which they are completely at home.

How I love my girls. How amazing they are, to come here, to do this with me, and never for one moment think this is not where we should be. They are my strength, my dream, my hope for wherever we go in this life.

Beautiful Little Boxes

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I have a schedule posted on the board in the English department’s office. It pretty much lists the twelve classes I will attend each week, all different levels of students ranging from ages 12-18, with correlating levels of English (seventh graders being the lowest level, twelfth graders the highest). However, since Spain has a different way of labeling students and grades, I haven’t quite memorized the various levels, nor knew, during my first week, what ages I would encounter until I entered the classrooms and asked students how old they were.

On my schedule in the English department are beautiful little boxes where the teachers can write the topic of the day. Beneath my schedule is a plastic funda, (I don’t know this word in English), where teachers can put photocopies of activities or, in most cases, of the textbooks that they make the poor students purchase, that we will be discussing that day.

This is how it should work: the day before the lesson, my beautiful little boxes should be filled with notes, copies should be underneath in the funda, and I can enter each of my twelve different subjects prepared to teach.

But let me review the teachers’ day in Spain. Yesterday I think it was 98 degrees (haven’t quite learned Centigrade yet, but I’m guessing over 40). Please note: no air conditioning. Students remain in the same room, together, all day, waiting for various teachers to filter in from all over the building, a pile of books and chalk in hand. Each teacher has at least three preps, usually five, and the schedule for all varies from day to day. There is not one moment of consistency. You cannot expect to go in and teach level one English during period two, five days a week. It will be three times a week, and the time changes depending on the day. Hopefully you can appear in the correct classroom at the correct time with the correct materials. So far, I have not succeeded in doing so.

I have not a qualm in the world then, when I return home and tell Bruce about my day, and he replies with, They are taking advantage of you because you showed them that you’re too good in the beginning, and I shoot back with, You have no idea what it’s like for them.

Today I had a plan for one of three classes, as one teacher put her copies in the funda and wrote her topic in my beautiful little box. I attended the bilingual meeting, where I was again reminded that I do not speak nor understand Spanish, other than when the music teacher (my new favorite person) spoke in a clear, slow, perfectly-understandable accent. I heard bits and pieces of conversations, and one somewhat heated debate involving menus, prices, and places to eat, having to do with, perhaps, everyone getting together on November 9? My goal for the end of the year: to know what happens during these weekly meetings!

I attended the first, prepared-for class. The teacher wanted me to run the entire show, beginning to end, and I felt confident that I at last understood my job. I am the only one who speaks English with perfect authority, and I only have these students once per week. They need to hear the native speaker. No matter what it is I have to say. But more importantly, the teachers? God do they need a break!!! We learned about multiculturalism in Britain after a brief lecture by me (while the teacher ran an errand) about the letters being the same in the words SILENT and LISTEN… high schoolers… ugh…

Moving on to the next class, I appeared on time, before the teacher, of course. She came in and saw the math scribbles on the board and asked me if I needed chalk, holding up the two tiny stubs of chalk that remained below the chalkboard. (Might I remind everyone that there are no overhead projectors, not even the transparency type??) Sure… I replied… what might we be doing today? (She hadn’t filled my beautiful little box, so I hadn’t the slightest idea, though I was immediately relieved to see a group of middle-school-aged kids, my home). All About Britain, she replied, and when I asked if they’d already started to read the book, she didn’t understand me. We switched to Spanish, but let me tell you. I may have trouble understanding Spanish, but at least I don’t claim to be a Spanish teacher, God forbid!

Luckily for me, this appeared the be the same lesson that was minutes-before thrust on me on Monday with a different teacher, so I perfected it quite nicely today, thank you very much! (I decided to omit his absurd terminating requirement of having one student at a time read aloud a sentence in English and translate, for the whole class, the Spanish equivalent… translation truly just doesn’t work most of the time). The teacher today? She sat in the back of the room fanning herself and not saying a word. Total trust after less than a week? I’ll take it.

On to lesson three, where I received the most beautiful gift of all time. First, there’s a fifteen-minute break for everyone in the school before the last period of the day! Second, I’d made questions for this particular text one day while sitting on the beach, and had printed them for the teacher, who, surprise surprise, never had time to make copies. I guess you will have to write them on the board then she told me… I stared at my palms, whose chalk dust I had just washed off in the bathroom. I suppose so… I admitted, crestfallen. But when we walked down to her room, voila! Smartboard, projector, computer. Do you have this room every week, for this class? I asked, more excited than a kid just arriving at Disney World. It was about the best gift I could imagine receiving. I pulled out my flash drive, asked the tallest boy in the class (high schoolers again??) to reach up to the ceiling and turn on the projector, and I felt like a real teacher again! I could type! Change fonts! Add colors!! Use a pointer, highlight, underline, everything I feel like every student needs, but ESPECIALLY second language students. How lucky the teacher is, in a room that has such a beautiful gift, one whose description would never fit into a beautiful little box, because words could never fit the gratitude that filled every moment of that oh-so-perfect American lesson.

Before I left for the day, I checked my schedule again. Someone had scribbled in, All About Britain, in the box for today (a little after the fact, I think). I also had a note on my desk from a teacher saying he wouldn’t be in the class I share with him tomorrow, but could I do the same lesson as Monday? (Well, the cultural liaison explained, Since everyone realized right away that you are an actual teacher, not like these teacher assistants we’ve had in the past, we have great trust in you…It’s up to you, though, if you want to do that…)

I couldn’t explain to her, in English or Spanish, what I do, what I have done, for the past seven years. I couldn’t explain it this morning in the meeting when the history teacher asked me if I knew anything about American history and I tried to say, in front of all, in my broken Spanish, that I co-taught that subject for seven years. I couldn’t explain to my colleagues back home what it is like to be a teacher in Spain. All I can do is be the best teacher I know how to be, to fit myself into a beautiful little box, and hope that when the box is opened, the students on the other side will see the world in a different way.

Bleeding Through

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

just as i miss the news,
don’t have to hear about
who won the football game,
and find myself falling further and further
into this new world of mine,

i almost lost sight of the day
my family came together
to put my grandmother’s ashes
next to my grandpa,
her home, house, and store
ever-present in my childhood memories

the funeral i swore
i’d never miss.

but oceans can run deep,
and i’ll never swim across
the distance that puts me here,
that makes me unlike
all i’ve known, all i’ve ever been,
into the new form that still bleeds
with my grandmother’s blood

Direct Translation

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I set my alarm for just after 8. It is almost laughable. 8!! I used to get up at 4:16. It is surreal to me now, not even in the realm of possibility. I need to finish grading these papers on Saturday morning (the real morning, not the Spaniard version) before we pick up our “free” weekend car.

The girls pop out of their rooms just after 9 (how I love these Persian blinds that block out all light). I am not finished yet, and they meander in and out of the living room eating Nutella-ridden bread, crumbs dripping onto the couch we’ll never be able to vacuum. Such a simple idea, isn’t it? A vacuum?

My world back home is seven hours away from waking, and I put sloppy grades on a few last papers for the job they pay me next to nothing for while they send emails about their latest advertising campaign and take money from the federal government to finance loans for students who will neither graduate nor pay them back, but that’s OK. Thank you, Phoenix, for funding the 54€ in gas, the uniforms that cost more than they’re worth at Corte Inglés, the place that wouldn’t take my American credit card when everywhere else it works just fine? The store that doesn’t have adjustable waist bands for my too-skinny girls, that doesn’t offer hangers but includes a post office, a ferreteria, a price that doubles for the same exact brand, same exact fucking skirt, so be sure you’re paying attention or you’ll get screwed? Oh… yes. THIS must be the store my Spaniards were talking about when they said clothes were expensive in Spain. I mean, Pepe Jeans and DKNY for toddlers???

But I digress. What is the point of this post? Ahh, yes. My suitcase. My bicycle. The items I paid a pretty penny for, the things I brought from America that I either regret or am forever thankful for. (Duh, the bike is on the forever thankful for list).

Why did I bring soap? Sweaters? Endless pairs of pants? Will I ever see anything but summer? We spent the day in our “free” car at the beach on October 6th!! Am I ever going to pull onto my legs the seven pairs of pants, the fall-to-the-floor skirts, the winter coat whose presence in my wardrobe is nothing but a harsh reminder of the snow in Denver that people keep posting about today?

Why did I not bring what I would need? Books for my girls. My LCD projector. My electric teapot. A driver’s license that works anywhere in the world? (oops… impossible) And today? Monistat.

To tag onto my realm of reality, yesterday’s post: Wal-mart, I miss you. Your $5.97 price for a three-day cure, your place on the shelf in the pharmacy section (holy fuck, I almost started typing that with an F! Spanglish is destroying my mind!!)

But no. It’s OK, I can do this. I can walk the two blocks to the Farmacia, green cross flashing almost every hour of the day (not Sunday, nor between 3-6, of course!!). I have iPhone translator ready! Am prepared to look for what it tells me. The phrase is memorized before I enter the tiny store, where I’m inundated with condoms, sex creams, and baby bottles, multivitamins for toddlers, all in the same section, of course. After a quick review of the this-is-no-Walgreens store, I face the facts: it’s going up to the counter or suffering weeks with an uncomfortable itch.

Wow. This blog is getting brutal.

It’s so simple, really! The phrase! Levadura crema anti hongos. She is young, just out of college, in her pretty white coat.”For your feet, or for your body?”

Shit. I’m screwed. There’s a possibility she thinks I have Athlete’s Foot. “Body!” I almost shout. (Do we need to specify which part?) She goes to the back and emerges with a small box of cream. Begins to announce the topical use on all parts of the body, and I hold my hand up. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is it. I need… I don’t know how to say it.” Some fast fingers later, Mr. iPhone translator fucks me over again. Is there no word for yeast in Spanish???

I type in yeast infection and all I get is a translation that basically says, infection of the cream to cure the infection?? I show her the screen, feeling sheepish. (It is only hours later, examining the Spanish directions for the cream, that I remember the Latin root, Candidas. Yay for etymology that doesn’t come through in moments of trepidation!). “Su traducción…” she begins, and, as I do as an ESL teacher, as I do every day in Spain, I think of a simpler way to say it. I type in vaginal infection, and… of course!! It comes right up, a direct translation, same fucking words and all??? “Infección vaginal?” Wow.

A grin on her face as she examines the screen I hold up in front of her, she pops in and out of the back, and I have two weeks of torture in front of me, no sex, no simple cure, no pulling off the shelf in Wal-mart my one night stand, my freedom handed over in less than six dollars. But at least I can say that I faced my fear, walked into the pharmacy, and translated all my doubts via iPhone into the everyday reality of my life. I am lost in translation, out for the count, ready to cash in my chips for all I didn’t pack, all the money I have taken advantage of for so long, that is now poured into the Spanish economy like blood bringing new life to a newborn, one I hold within my arms and nurse as I think of a new beginning to my life in this home that is my home and not my home.

What I Miss

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

There are things I miss so fiercely that my heart aches. A good long, cold and isolated bike ride, breath steaming out of my lungs, coming across the deer along the fence, the perfect mountain view tinted by rays of morning sun, everything just coming into the dawn of a new day. My mornings, solitude and strength building me up for whatever I might face, knowing that I could face the world after that ride.

My recliner. Chosen by me, ridiculed for being too large, but so thick, soft, a perfect armrest I once used to nurse all my babies, it leaned back perfectly, laptop in lap, movie on screen, book in hand, the perfect piece of furniture for every situation.

My Hyundai. Not the car itself, its junky no-lights-on-interior nothing to brag about. Just the freedom it provided, piling the kids in on our latest adventure, trekking across town to the museum, the zoo, the reservoir… how I miss the ability to go anywhere, anytime, for them to share that freedom with me, to be able to explore the world without limitations of bus schedules, car rental fees, and finances.

The telephone. Being able to pick it up and call my friends, my parents, my sister, anyone, without having to worry about an eight-hour time difference, without thinking, what a fucking shitty day, I need to talk, and knowing that I can’t talk to anyone, any time, about all the things in life I need to talk about. That it really is just us, the five of us, and we have to figure out a way to be everything for each other in every moment, whether it’s my girls’ fierce insistence on me spending my last dollar on school uniforms I can’t afford because they already stand out enough, and they need to fit in, or Bruce hating his inability to communicate anything, or me running into one problem after another with the principal (what IS it with me and principals???).

Wal-mart. God, I never thought I’d say that. Wal-mart, I miss you! I know I cursed you every time I walked in, ridiculed your inability to keep items in stock, criticized your exploitation of Chinese products, your destruction of the natural environment. But I wish you were here to save me when I can’t find a decent store to buy what my girls need, to be open when I need to print out a bus ticket or make copies for lessons, to take back all my items without a receipt!! TO BE OPEN ALL THE TIME!! Even Sundays!

Microbrews. I don’t think any description needs to follow the smooth taste of a home-brewed Hefeweizen straight out of the tap from Dry Dock.

My oven!! AN oven. No homemade pizzas. No baking chicken or potatoes. No broiling steak. But above all and everything, never a chance, for a whole year, to make a single batch of brownies. I can almost feel the melted chips sticking to my tongue, the tiny crumbs at the bottom of the pan pinched between my fingers, the smell that filled the house for hours…

Again, my words, my beautiful words. Trapped here in this blog, lost to everyone here who thinks I’m just some stupid American who’s timid and speechless. Oh, how I miss my words.

Dear America: Love Your School!!

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

You are so lucky!! I have always known this, and tried not to take advantage of your wealth. I mean it. We don’t have all the typical luxuries that many Americans have, especially in the past 9.5 years of having children and only one salary to support them, one TEACHER’S salary. But still. Now that I’ve been here, I realize day in and day out how SPOILED we are. We have a huge home with a huge yard, two cars, the ability to go anywhere at any time, and jobs that ROCK!

Let me tell you about what it’s like to be a teacher in Spain. To be a student in Spain. You will have, more or less, the same hours as in America. But the similarities end there. Students, you have to buy, and carry across town, all your textbooks. Your parents will put forward 300€-400€ every year just for this. Teachers, you can say goodbye to the dream of having your own classroom. You’ll move around all day, toting books and supplies, to white-walled, un-air-conditioned, packed-to-the-gills classrooms with teenage body odors seeping into every moment. And just when you thought you could make an amazing presentation to your students on the first day of school with the PowerPoint you spent hours preparing, filled with special effects and links to important sites crucial for their understanding? Sorry! There is not a computer here. Not a projector. Not even an old-fashioned, transparency-laden, ten-years-back projector, nor a screen! (Don’t even MENTION a document camera, please, or I might die!) A whiteboard? Please, a whiteboard? Of course not! Everyone loves the feeling of dry chalk dust on their palms for the rest of the dashing-through-hallways day! (Just in case you were under the impression that you could tote your Mac and projector from America and use Wifi to access everything you ever needed–God forbid you have such an idea!–I might add that Wifi pretty much doesn’t exist here, and if it “does” it’s a lie, sham, scam, and disappointment, because you might wait five minutes for one page to open!)

A couple of hours will pass, and it feels like it ought to be lunch time. A siren announces that it’s… not lunch time. Oh, I’m sorry, your parents can’t afford to feed you? Sucks to be you, no free-and-reduced lunch forms to fill out here! No cafeteria! Perhaps your parents packed you some pan and you can wander around the school for thirty minutes counting down till your main meal at 3:30, after the last bell.

If you’re a student and you need special services, such as, um, Spanish as a second language? Special education? A teacher might just come and pull you out of class every day with a small group of other students, a mixture of all types of needs, and you will neither know why nor have a single phone call or form sent home to your parents.

I know what you’re thinking, America. Sounds a lot easier, doesn’t it? There’s no stress about decorating classrooms, arranging desks in a special way, filling out paperwork and attending IEP/ELLP/MEETINGS! But come on! Just try it for one day, and you will be forever grateful for what you may have thought was a desperate situation, a no-respect, get-me-out-of-this-profession situation. Trust me. One day in a Spanish school, and you will learn to LOVE your job, your board of education, your rights, your Americanism!!

And that, over everything, I think, is why I’m here. 🙂